Song of the South

So this last summer we flew out to visit my parents in north east Georgia. It was our second time visiting, first time in the summer.

We kinda fell in love. We road tripped up to visit some sweet friends in Tennessee for a couple days. We fell in love with the beauty of North Carolina, Tennesee and South Carolina. And it's crazy, for this California girl, to drive for three hours and drive through three different states. In Southern California three hours gets you...somewhere else in southern California.

By the end of our trip I was on Zillow looking for a new house and on every county education website looking for a new teaching job for Andrew.

Here's the biggest reason why: everything is more affordable in the places we visited in the south. In southern California $300k will get you a tiny house. Probably without a yard. Sometimes only in a questionable part of town. We are fortunate we were sooo poor during the housing boom years ago and couldn't buy a house. When the market crashed and there were a zillion cheap foreclosures we were a little better off and were able to buy a nearly 2000 sf house with a good sized lot in a great neighborhood for almost nothing. But looking at real estate in other parts of the country has opened my eyes to how unaffordable California truly is. My kids will not have it easy when they're adults trying to start families. And while I think a little bit of struggle is good for a young family, as it was/is for us, my fear is that my kids will move out of state and I won't get to live close to them.

So why not move out of state, to somewhere more affordable, now when they have no choice but to move with me?? Cost of living is much lower, schools are more affordable, we can get a bigger piece of land where my kids can roam, wild and free...

In my mind, I see this simple life that we could have. Free from nightly commitments that have us shuffling our kids around town. A large lot we can grow a garden on. My kids being able to safely explore their surroundings....it just seems so ideal. I know that my little dream here would probably be very far from reality. And I ask myself, why can't I just create that little dream where we're at now?

Truthfully, I feel the pressure to have my kids involved in stuff. Since we homeschool I like them having activities and friends outside of the house. It just snowballs into overwhelming very easily. And having four kids...it's only going to get harder. We've already discussed what we'll do when the boys are old enough for sports and other activities and we're torn in four different directions. I think it would be less stressful if we had family around to go to the games that we couldn't be at, or help drive to and from practice. But that's not our reality.

I don't know if we'll stay here, or move, or what. I know I need to focus on being content on where we're at, rather than mentally packing our stuff and moving to my dream world in the south.

This was taken outside a bbq restaurant in Georgia. Notice the greenery and quaint little stream in the background. Definitely not California.